Bawaal review :
A direct to OTT release; Nitesh Tiwari's Bawaal gets an A for its intent and the underlying message. Even with its share of flaws and a few slack moments in between the two hours fifteen minutes runtime.
A highly image conscious Lucknowi school teacher (Varun Dhawan) despises his wife (Janhvi Kapoor) due to her epileptic condition. This ever hyper history teacher creates a 'bawaal' when he slaps the legislator's son and gets instantly suspended. As an image saving ploy, he travels to Europe with wifey in tow, and streams the World War II (WW II) striken cities of Paris, Berlin, Normandy, etc as a live history lesson to his students...
Admittedly, Bawaal's basic concept of finding happiness in oneself, is quite pertinent for today's times. To quote a yesteryear song "Duniya mein itna ghum hai, mera ghum kitna kum hai", is the lesson here. Varun's inherent frustration finds a vent while exploring the war sites of Europe. His strained equation with Janhvi also changes during the course of their Europe tour, which make for some genuinely funny moments. The Gujju gang encounter is one such hilarious sequence.
On the flipside, correlating WW II events to the human psyche of finding true happiness may not be relatable to the average Indian. Perhaps a history lesson from India might have served the purpose better.
Tiwari extracts awesome performances from his lead pair. Varun Dhawan is just perfect as the utter selfish dude, who just cannot think beyond himself. His subsequent self realization also looks completely convincing. Janhvi Kapoor is a revelation. She springs a pleasant surprise with a highly controlled and effective act besides looking extremely pretty throughout the movie. Bawaal would certainly boost her career in a big way. Kudos!
To sum up, Bawaal is worth a dekho. Don't know how its theatrical performance would have been, but it will definitely do very well on Amazon Prime. Hit hai boss!!
Regards, Sumeet Nadkarni.
A direct to OTT release; Nitesh Tiwari's Bawaal gets an A for its intent and the underlying message. Even with its share of flaws and a few slack moments in between the two hours fifteen minutes runtime.
A highly image conscious Lucknowi school teacher (Varun Dhawan) despises his wife (Janhvi Kapoor) due to her epileptic condition. This ever hyper history teacher creates a 'bawaal' when he slaps the legislator's son and gets instantly suspended. As an image saving ploy, he travels to Europe with wifey in tow, and streams the World War II (WW II) striken cities of Paris, Berlin, Normandy, etc as a live history lesson to his students...
Admittedly, Bawaal's basic concept of finding happiness in oneself, is quite pertinent for today's times. To quote a yesteryear song "Duniya mein itna ghum hai, mera ghum kitna kum hai", is the lesson here. Varun's inherent frustration finds a vent while exploring the war sites of Europe. His strained equation with Janhvi also changes during the course of their Europe tour, which make for some genuinely funny moments. The Gujju gang encounter is one such hilarious sequence.
On the flipside, correlating WW II events to the human psyche of finding true happiness may not be relatable to the average Indian. Perhaps a history lesson from India might have served the purpose better.
Tiwari extracts awesome performances from his lead pair. Varun Dhawan is just perfect as the utter selfish dude, who just cannot think beyond himself. His subsequent self realization also looks completely convincing. Janhvi Kapoor is a revelation. She springs a pleasant surprise with a highly controlled and effective act besides looking extremely pretty throughout the movie. Bawaal would certainly boost her career in a big way. Kudos!
To sum up, Bawaal is worth a dekho. Don't know how its theatrical performance would have been, but it will definitely do very well on Amazon Prime. Hit hai boss!!
Regards, Sumeet Nadkarni.